Tamil actor and producer Arya, talks with Subhash K Jha about his newest film, Mr X, which began streaming on Jio Hotstar May 14th.
Your film Mr X is now streaming?
Yes, it took time to make this film because it’s like a spy thriller, and we had a huge canvas, too many locations, and too many artists in the film, and the budget was a little high. So it took its own time, and the CG, everything took time.
Did the delay take a toll on the film?
It should have come earlier, but yeah, we finally have it now. So really excited, at the same time a little nervous. Things should go well.
Do you think the audience will warm up to your film?
It’s a VFX-driven action film. Our audience is very well equipped to appreciate that because now all kinds of films run well in India. So that’s not the issue. The only thing that people should be able to relate to it, the emotion has to work. Though it’s a spy film, we have proper emotion connected to our film. So, in that way, I would say it’s not just the action sequences or the VFX. We are not relying on the VFX or anything like that. It’s driven mostly by the emotions between the characters in the film.
How did Dhurandhar impact your film?
It was actually a positive impact, because people are more aware about the spies and their dual lives now. So, we don’t have to get into the details of what the spy is about. So, we just have to go with the incidents, and that should keep them engaged. If we keep them engaged with that, then I think we are through it. Dhurandhar has been a positive impact for Mr X. Because the entire spy world and the understanding of what a spy does and things like that.
So yours too is an espionage thriller?
Mr X is a proper spy thriller which is based on true events. It’s not entirely fictional; it’s fictional to some extent. It is based on true events. We couldn’t just go with the real incidents. So for the experience of it, for the screenplay and everything we had made a few adjustments to make it more entertaining So it is a combination of events that happened in real. So it’s something like Dhurandhar, where we have many real events compounded and made into just one screenplay. And it will have a proper Hollywood kind of a feel to it. Very stylish, like a Mission Impossible thing or something like that. So we kept it very clean, very neat, very stylish, and to the point, to the subject.
Mr X comes at a time when Tamil films are not doing well?
Tamil films are doing well. Especially the mid-size film or the small films have been really doing well. Maybe the few of the most eagerly-expected films did not do well at the box office. So, that was quite a letdown in the recent times. And definitely if we give a good film, the audience are going to take it.
